Help, Hotlines and First-Responder Cancer Orgs

OVERVIEW

Most groups listed on this page are national organizations with hotlines and local branches offering immediate help from professionals and trained volunteers. Phone counselors may be cancer survivors themselves. Some larger organizations offer free phone support in several languages.

Some counselors may have less specialized -- or less up to date -- information about prostate cancer than you need. But their trained ability to listen may help you express your immediate concerns and begin to chart your course.

Others may have specialized knowledge but may also offer to sell you supplements and recommend a doctor who happens to be on their organization's board or in its network of influence.

Most likely you're aware of the need to seek genuine second opinions about your cancer treatments. So too it makes sense to obtain counselling and emotional support, if needed, from people who treat you as a person capable of rebuilding your own life and finding the best available treatment for you.

For obvious reasons we recommend bypassing hotline help from websites run by any drug company. Less obviously, helplines run by counselors hired by doctors or other professionals may nudge or direct cancer patients toward a pool or network of affiliated specialists. If you become dependent on their free advise you may end up paying extraordinary fees. Free help from an organization under the aegis of leading prostate cancer specialists is hard to beat. But if their advice to seek second and third opinions fades out when it comes to second opinions about them and those they recommend, watch out.

National Cancer Institute (NCI) USA

1-800-4-CANCER

(1-800-422-6237)
TTY: 1-800-332-8615
Talk with an information specialist from the NCI's Cancer Information Service - within the United States, Monday through Friday 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. local time.
An excellent cancer hotline.
Go to website for live help, e-mail contact and snail mail address.

The National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship, the only survivor-led advocacy organization working exclusively on behalf of people with all types of cancer and their families, is dedicated to assuring quality cancer care for all Americans.

The UK's leading cancer information service. Aims to help people live with cancer by providing information and emotional
support for patients, their families and health professionals. It is recognized
as the foremost provider of cancer information in the United Kingdom.
3 Bath Place, Rivington Street, London EC2A 3JR Tel. 020 76969003 Freephone: 0808 800 1234. Offers support and information and a new Cancer in Your Language service which includes 12 additional national freephone helplines specifically for speakers of the country's most common ethnic minority languages: